This article walks through the process of using WebSpy Vantage to create a comprehensive Remote Desktop Report by extracting information about remote desktop sessions (RDP) from your firewall log files. I'm using Firewall logs from Microsoft Forefront TMG, but you could just as easily use logs from other firewalls, such as the packet filter logs from Sophos UTM, or connection end events from Cisco ASA. The general process is the same. Let's get started.

Using WebSpy Vantage to analyze and report across your Palo Alto Firewall deployment is a great way to keep on top of web usage throughout your organization. This guide will take you through the process of configuring Palo Alto Firewalls and WebSpy Vantage to produce accurate and meaningful web activity reports that can be utilized [...]

Reverse proxy reporting (using WebSpy Vantage Ultimate) is a great way to gain insight to how the Internet is using your published web sites or web applications. Forward proxy reporting is all about the users accessing content on the Internet from within your corporate network. Reverse proxy reporting is the opposite. When you have a [...]

The Windows native firewall has been around for some time now. It first made its appearance in Windows XP as the Internet Connection Sharing Firewall, which was a basic inbound firewall. In Windows XP SP2 it was turned on by default and in Windows Vista, it had grown up to be both in and outbound [...]

Firewalls and proxies generate a lot of log data. Multiple gigabytes per day are commonplace now. The log files themselves are generally simple flat text files. Their size comes from the sheer volume of entries, not from being rich data types. The log file size not only consumes disk space during logging, storing, and archiving, but [...]

What is an Alias? As defined by Google, in computing terms, an alias is: An alternative name or label that refers to a file, command, address, or other item, and can be used to locate or access it. When it comes to WebSpy Vantage, an alias takes log data that does not make sense and [...]

Legacy applications and websites remain in place for longer than they should, often because there is a suspicion that they are still being used. Meanwhile, the application is hanging around consuming IT resources that could be put towards a more useful purpose. To safely decommission a web site or service, you need to be sure [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]